On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Fam Zheng <famc...@gmail.com> wrote: > As a project of Google Summer of Code 2011, I'm now working on > improving VMDK image support. There are many subformats of VMDK > virtual disk, some of which have separate descriptor file and others > don't, some allocate space at once and some others grow dynamically, > some have optional data compression. The current support of VMDK > format is very limited, i.e. qemu now supports single file images, but > couldn't recognize the widely used multi-file types. We have planned > to add such support to VMDK block driver and enable more image types, > and the working timeline is set in weeks (#1 to #7) as: > > [#1] Monolithic flat layout support > [#2] Implement compression and Stream-Optimized Compressed Sparse > Extents support. > [#3] Improve ESX Server Sparse Extents support. > [#4] Debug and test. Collect virtual disks with various versions and > options, test qemu-img with them. By now some patches may be ready to > deliver. > [#5, 6] Add multi-file support (2GB extent formats) > [#7] Clean up and midterm evaluation.
Thanks to Fam's work, we'll hopefully support the latest real-world VMDK files in qemu-img convert within the next few months. If anyone has had particular VMDK "problem files" which qemu-img cannot handle, please reply, they would make interesting test cases. Stefan
